The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1887-05-21
THE SPHINX.
The Human-Headed Lion God AL
ways a Marvel. .a. Cd.
1t Existed Before the Pyramids and Was
Covered With Sand and Restored
When History Was Young
Later Labors.

By the ordinary traveller, the Sphinx
has for long been looked upon as one
of the wonders of the world; silently it
has stood there chin-deop in sand, gaz-
ing with far-away look in its eyes,
as if it would probe the very depths of
eternity. As one gazes up into its
weather-beaten, time-worn face, one
longs for it to be able to speak and tell
us of its history, who formed it, and
why. To-day, the energy of French
engineers is endeavoring to solve, in
part, the question. NJ. Grebaut, the
present keeper of Antiquities at the
Boulak Museum, has been struggling
valiantly to disinter it from the sand,
which has buried it almost to the throat
All day long Arabs are employed load
ing trucks with the sand, which they
bring up in buckets to the tramway
above them. This is not the first at
tempt which has been made to uncover
this colossalmonument of Egyptian an
tiquity. Thothmes ". cleared away the
sand; but by the fourteenth century B.
c. it was buried to the chin; in 1917,
Signor Caviglia brought to light the
flight of stone steps, forty feet in width,
described by Pliny; and in 1869, at the
time of the opening of the Suez canal,
the great Sphinx was cleared of sand
as far as the plateau upon which the
paws rest. Excavations southwark are
in progress, the result of which will
show whether the assumption that the
Sphinx stands in the middle of a huge
amphitheater hewn by man out of liv-
ing rock, be true or not
We go below the level of the present
ground-for the steps lead down, not
up to the Sphinx-to gaze at the bat
tered monster, and are astonished at
his proportions. The human-headed
lion god, the impersonation of the sun
at rest, is upwards of one hundred feet
in height, and one hundred and ninety
feet in length, From west to east he
lies, in straight line with Khafra' S
Pyramid, his face being towards the
east. His enormous paws, partly
hollow, have been restored in Roman
times, and are well nigh covered with
the scribbles of Greek travellers, who,
like Tom Jones and John Brown OF
these nineteenth-century days, have felt
it incumbent upon them to leave the
memorials of their visit behind them.
In the space between the paws, which
is thirty feet long and ten feet wide,
an altar stands; originally, there was a
small sanctuary here, lined with votive
tablets, but only the stella of Thothmes
~. now remains.
Three temples encompassed the
SphinX-one to the north, dedicated tC
Isis, which we know, from an inscrip
ton, was still used in the sixth century
B. c., as one Psametik, who was son O
Uzahor, the son of Noferabra, was ther
''the prophet of Hormakhu," and O.
Isis, Queen of the Pyramids, and Offered
to them holy incense. A second stoot
upon the south side, wherein Osiri:
Sokar, the king of the underworld, wa,
specially invoked by the pilgrims who
tlocked to his worship. The space al
round here was once a vast metropolis
called in the hieratic writings "Ro-set, ,
the door of the death-underworld, anC
many strange stories are told of thi
spirit-haunted. enchanted region. TIL
third temple is dedicated to Hormakhu
the Sphinx himself
The age of the Sphinx it seems i'm
possible to know; but we gather that i
was standing in the days of Khufu, from
a memorial tablet which speaks of tn,
temples; for there we learn that "He
the living Hor, King of the upper ant
lower country-Khufu, he, the dispense
of life, tound sanctuary of the GOODIES
Isis, the Queen of the Pyramid, beside
the temple of the Sphinx, northwes
frOm the temple and the city of Osiris
the lord of the abodes of the dead. HI
built his pyramid Chat of the Lights
near the temple of that goddess; and HI
built temple for the Kings daughte
Hontsen, near this temple" 1t existed
then, at any rate before the days of thu
Pyramids Of Gizeh; and Maspero think
that if it is not actually prehistoric, i
may, at all events, be looked upon a.
the Oldest monument in "ancien
Egypt" -----....---- -.